


Aspects of Life and Death (Five Ways Janet Fraiser Didn't Die)

by ilien



Category: Highlander: The Series, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Multiple Narrators, POV First Person, five things, tenses are a mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-23
Updated: 2011-05-23
Packaged: 2017-10-19 17:48:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/203531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilien/pseuds/ilien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"This little spying project of yours has become my life"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aspects of Life and Death (Five Ways Janet Fraiser Didn't Die)

"Benjamin! Benjamin, open the door, I know you're there!" I'm knocking, and shouting, ignoring the pouring rain while demanding to see the man I've hated for years.

When I last saw him, I was young, and passionate, and full of deep and sincere beliefs. I became a mother to a beautiful baby who was found at the gate of our church, and I refused to remain a wife to a man who was a violation of God's laws. Now I'm old, and my daughter is dead. And the man I'd hated, - the man who's still my husband in the eyes of God, even after all this time, - carries hope.

The door opens, and I see him, for the first time in almost twenty years. He looks so unimaginably, impossibly young, and his eyes are so old. Probably sometimes age is something you do not notice until you're old enough; probably that's the reason why I did not see the years in his eyes when I was a young girl. His face is young, but his eyes are old and tired.

He lets me in without a word, helps me take off my coat, hands me a warm blanket.

"Benjamin, where is Jane? Her body was not in the coffin. Where is my daughter?"

"She's sleeping," he says, casually. "Upstairs, in her room."

"She's.. like you." I'm not asking, but he still answers.

"Yes." He smiles, this amazing bright smile I used to love. It looks forced now. "An abomination, like myself. Please come inside, have some tea."

I shake my head slowly. "Will she be all right?"

He nods. "If I have anything to say about it."

"You take care of her, for me," with that, I kiss his cheek, take my coat and leave. I will never call my little girl all the names I called him when he told me the truth. I still cannot force myself to see her. Not yet. Probably not ever. I hope he won't tell her that.

***

"I did not want him to kill him, I swear, I did not!"

"Shhh, I know, I know. It was either you or him, you know the rules. It's okay to be scared, it's okay to cry."

"What do I do now?"

"Now we go home, and you sleep. I'll take care of the rest."

"But how—I'm supposed to live with that?"

"Let's start with taking it one day at a time."

***

"...it goes against everything I've been trained to do, but the truth is, he'd be a lot better off if I'd.." I didn't even feel like I was betraying myself or my oaths when I said that.

I was the one to give him the painkillers, the one to change most of his bandages, the one—the one to tell him how he was going to die. Painkillers and bandages weren't my job really, but I wanted to spare the nurses; it was way too traumatic even for them.

Deep inside I felt this was my fault. He did something I'd seen done dozens of times—now and again, an Immortal would give a life to save someone, I've seen it during wars, I've seen it in scientific labs, I've done it myself. But Daniel—Daniel was mortal. I would give anything, anything at all, to switch places with him right there and then. That's what immortals are really for, I suddenly realized: to keep such things from happening, to spare lives, to take away their pain. That's the whole point of our existence. It should have been me. I couldn't imagine a single scenario of how I could actually have been there instead of him, but it should, it should have been me.

And now I was dying inside every minute, something breaking in me every time I heard him breathing, every breath harder than the last one; every time I looked at the monitors and saw that he got a little bit worse; every time I looked in his eyes and saw the growing pain.

When his heart stopped, mine didn't.

***

"So.. you have any questions?"

Janet, bless her, didn't give me time to get mad or something. She just kept talking, explaining her immortality and her reasons to keep it secret. I wasn't really listening, trying to reconcile myself with the events of the past three days, but I wasn't mad at her, either. How can you be mad at a friend who's just come back from the dead? Not like it's the first time, but it never gets old, does it? Which suddenly brought a question to my mind.

"Remember, when Daniel was dying?" She looked surprised, but nodded. "You said I had no idea how painful it was going to get. It sounded like you did have the idea." By the time I finished the question it wasn't really a question to me.

"We were working on a—nuclear weapon. 1940s, and most of it is still classified." She took a deep breath. "I was not the only casualty... I don't think I want to talk about it right now."

I filled her glass again and we drank our scotch in silence.

***

"You— _what_?" I could not believe that. She was my best student. I simply could not believe.

"She's my best friend. Ben, I couldn't leave my her heartbroken. I had to tell her."

"It's Adam," I corrected automatically. "And Jane, I could expect that from you when you were twenty. I thought you'd be smarter than that by now!"

"She's my best friend." She'd always been stubborn.

"She's a career military officer working for a top secret military organization. Do you have any idea how bad it can turn out if she merely follows the regulations?"

"I was a career military officer, working for a top secret military organization, too."

"It's not the same, Jane, and you know it."

"Like hell it isn't! That's the whole point, Ben! It's eight years of my life, and it's the life I fucking lived!"

"Language! And it's Adam."

"It's Janet."

"Fair enough."

"Look. Me joining Stargate Command was entirely your idea. You persuaded me, you made this identity, you coached me to fit into this "top secret military organization", as you put it. At was all your doing!"

Oh yes, I remembered that vividly. It'd been years, but Joe still felt betrayed about how I had left him and Mac in the middle of that millennium demon mess. But even that had been a compromise: I knew I should have gone myself, instead of sending a mere child, however bright. But I'd been hit by the train named Duncan MacLeod and couldn't really use my brain properly. Well, it was the time to face the music.

I sighed and she took that for an encouragement. "This little spying project of yours has become my life," she continued her rant. "I have friends, a home, a daughter... Ben, do you really think I could just leave them like this?"

A daughter, oh yes. My stepdaughter's foster child couldn't have any other name but Cassandra.

"Did you tell Cassie as well?" I said without bothering to remind her my name again.

"Cassie's known for a while. She found out when she was... evolving."

"Well, that's just great!"

"You can keep on yelling at me all night, or just kill me right away and go straight to damage control. Your choice, however." She shrugged. "You know they know and you know I would tell them even if you'd have yelled beforehand. So, what are you going to do _now_?"

That's my girl, pocket Napoleon. She had a point, definitely.

"I'll have to kill Adam Pierson," I told her with a sigh, after a long pause. "And do what I had to do from the start: join SGC on my own."

"And you, young lady," I sighed again and smiled. "Are cooking the dinner you're inviting your friends for". We'd take it from here. One day at a time.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [How to Come Back to Life Without Anybody Getting Suspicious](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9410282) by [jacquelee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jacquelee/pseuds/jacquelee)




End file.
